


stranger than you could imagine

by Sixthlight



Series: stranger than you could imagine [1]
Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: First Time, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pining, happier than it sounds?, implied Thomas Nightingale/David Mellenby, or at least more hopeful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 03:23:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3835141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Thomas looked at Peter sometimes and saw a handsome young man – well, that was his business. The moment always passed, a strange sort of visual illusion that vanished when you tilted your head the other way. Except when it didn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stranger than you could imagine

**Author's Note:**

> Normally I _much_ prefer the fanon of Nightingale as gay and totally comfortable with it; it’s a lot more fun to write, and also the guy’s life has sucked enough already. But you can blame this one on linndechir, who commented that it was equally plausible to imagine a Nightingale who’d grown up attracted to men in the early 20th century and dealt with it by being very repressed, and then lived long enough to see a world where he didn’t have to be…and had no idea how to start un-repressing. I've been obsessively editing it for months (yes, this is the LESS stupidly angsty version), so it's time to bury it or let it into the wilds of fandom. Guess which I picked. 
> 
> Title is adapted from a much-paraphrased quote by J.B.S. Haldane, an English biologist: "I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we _can_ suppose."

The first time Thomas nearly gave himself away was when Peter had announced at dinner that he needed to put in for time off.

“August,” he said. “Just for a weekend – if I can get away, of course – Dom’s invited me to his wedding. And Bev, too. I could drop by Oswald’s place when I’m there, if you like, say hi. I know Bev wants to see Mellissa.” That had been when Beverley Brook and he were still together; by August they’d not been, but this had been April.

“DC Croft, in Herefordshire?” Thomas had asked. That was the only Dominic he could think of that Peter would assume he knew about.

“That’s right,” Peter said cheerfully. “I guess Victor finally talked him into it. He wasn’t too keen on moving to the farm, but they’re mad about each other, so I think they’ll cope. Good for them, anyway.”

Thomas didn’t think he’d done anything – reacted in any particular way to this casual announcement that Peter’s friend Dom was marrying a man, and Peter thought nothing of it – but he must have, because Peter’s eyes’ narrowed.

“You don’t…” he said slowly. “Sir – you don’t – have a _problem_ with that, do you?”

“With – oh, no, not at all,” Thomas said, because he didn’t; he wouldn’t wish his own hang-ups on anyone. “It’s just – the world has changed rather drastically from when I was young, and some of it was predictable – airplanes and so on – and this, well, wasn’t. It makes me remember I’m living in the future.”

Peter digested this. “I suppose your whole life is kind of a science-fiction story, isn’t it? Except the bit where it’s really urban fantasy. Huh.”

Thomas had no idea what “urban fantasy” was and decided not to ask.

“So, I can go?” Peter returned to his original point. “Circumstances permitting. There’s Lesley’s whole deadline, so god knows what will have happened by then.”

“I’m not going to treat that sort of vague warning as a countdown clock,” Thomas told him. “So, yes, I see no reason why you shouldn’t confirm your attendance. After all, Constable Croft is a policeman; he understands the requirements of the job, if you’re forced to cancel.”

“He understand the requirements of _our_ job, in particular,” Peter said wryly. “He’s not going to be forgetting the unicorns anytime soon.”

“I imagine not,” Thomas said, relieved that the topic had changed.

Peter did glance at him, once or twice, over the course of the meal, as if there was something he wanted to ask – but he didn’t. For the best, of course.

*

That otherwise unremarkable conversation had merely been an outward illustration of how much the world had changed under him – stranger than he _could_ have imagined, as a boy. He’d been well aware, by the end of his time at Casterbrook, that women held no particular attraction for him. He didn’t dislike them – he had been very fond of his sisters and still missed them, all these decades after their deaths – but the idea of sneaking out of the school to meet girls, or kiss them, or other things, hadn’t interested him. It had been put down by his peers to him being too interested in magic, and perhaps rugby, to have time for romance; and perhaps that had had some truth to it. But it had been a more shameful thing than that. It was his fellow students he’d wanted – to kiss, or other things. Better to lose himself in magic than that.

It happened, of course, because it was a boys’ boarding school, and they were in the throes of adolescence, assuring each other that it didn’t matter, it didn’t count, it wasn’t _real_. All according to a complex set of rules about who did what to whom and when. Left behind, largely, once they moved into the wider world. But once he’d left Casterbrook, Thomas had realised it wasn’t going to change for him, no matter how much easier it would have been if it had. At least working for the Folly and the Foreign Office it was all-too-easy to avoid the question of marriage – he was so often out of the country. People made certain assumptions, too, about his friendship with Molly. And he couldn’t say he’d been lonely, or anything like that – he’d had friends, and his work, and magic demanded such focus to achieve true mastery. There were always times, slip-ups, when he couldn’t – but never with anyone who expected anything more than what it was, the relief of – certain pressures.

Then he’d gotten to know David properly, not too long before the war, and he’d thought perhaps they might – that David might – that there was some sort of feeling there. But there had been the war, and Ettersberg, and by the time he’d got out of hospital David had shot himself. So that was that. Besides – nothing had changed, really; you couldn’t be _fired_ from the Folly, but it still would have gotten them shunned, perhaps charged, if they had been terribly unlucky. Look at Turing, after all. So perhaps it was better nothing had come of it.

By the time the dust had settled from the war, Thomas was in his fifties, and the kind of encounter he’d had as a young man held few attractions anymore. He’d been quietly resigned to getting older, and letting all those sorts of thoughts go from his life. He had enough to keep him busy as it was. There weren’t nearly as many cases that required the Folly’s attention as there had been before the war, but there were enough, and where there had been thousands of British wizards, there was just him. Besides, the world was changing out of all recognition, and he had no particular desire to change with it. He found he could go whole weeks without leaving the Folly, without seeing another person who wasn’t Molly; he wondered, occasionally, when he died, how long it would take anyone to notice. It wasn’t as if Molly would tell them.

Then, of all the things that could have happened, he’d started getting younger again. At first it had just been a surge of energy, a revitalisation – it was then he’d gone out and bought the Jag, his previous car being nearly thirty years old by then. But by the mid-seventies he’d realised he was getting _younger_ , really younger, not just ceasing to age quite as fast. His hair was starting to grow in brown again, when it had mostly been white, his wrinkles were smoothing out, he was regaining his strength. It was entirely perplexing. And a gift, in a strange way, even though it meant he would go on even longer, with all his friends gone. He had no apprentices, no-one to continue the work he did. At least this way he could continue to do it himself.

Thomas wondered how far it would go. He had no real desire to go backwards through adolescence again at some future point. Although since he seemed to be aging backwards at a one-to-one ratio – by the nineteen-eighties he looked much like he had in his sixties – that would be some time off, if it ever happened.

But there were certain other problems associated with it. It had been easier and easier, as he’d gotten older, to ignore any – desires. And it wasn’t as if he was meeting anyone, anyway, to be tempted. But the magic was coming back and so was his youth, inexorably and mercilessly, and the world shifted under him. Wanting this, men – it hadn’t been illegal since the sixties, now, for long enough that there were people who didn’t remember when it was. They crossed into a new millennium, and Thomas was young enough again to want and had no idea how to start, or if he even could. He saw people, sometimes – men with men, or women with women, in bars or on the street, more and more often, and didn’t know what to say or think. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen that, before the war, but only in certain times and places. Now he saw them in the broad light of day, in the streets of London, and didn’t know how to be that brave.

And besides, there was always the possibility he’d keep aging down to nothing, and all these young people – _everyone_ was young, now, sometimes terrifyingly so. So he set aside the wanting, and kept his mind on the job. He’d had enough practice there.

*

Then Peter Grant had stumbled into his strange corner of London. Thomas had been well aware of what Peter thought, that first time he’d spoken to him. By some strange coincidence the clothing he’d been wearing for more than half a century now sent a message that was both perfectly true and perfectly false, all at once. He knew the reputation of Covent Garden at that time of night, as well. But Peter hadn’t been offended, or afraid, or disgusted; just politely wary, focused on his job. Hunting down a ghost.

Thomas had been considering taking an apprentice for some time, by then, but had never found anyone he thought suitable. Any candidate would need to be young, to have time to learn, and tough, of course, to deal with all the strangeness the job could come up with, and clever. And Thomas would have to be comfortable with them; it wasn’t as it had been when he was young, he would be solely responsible for the lad, or perhaps it might even be a WPC, he supposed, although they weren’t called that any longer, were they?

So he really hadn’t thought of Peter in _that_ way, not at first, despite how they’d met – despite the way Peter had looked at him, there in Covent Garden. He’d been too busy trying to bring him up to speed. Thomas understood that perhaps the classics weren’t quite as useful in modern education, but it would have been so much easier if Peter had had even a _little_ Latin. And all the rest of it, of course. Getting shot, _again_ , then he was barely out of hospital and there were chimaeras running loose and jazz vampires in Soho and a whole cabal of magicians trained right under his nose, by Geoffrey Wheatcroft of all people. And that club in Soho…he’d been there, right there in London, not much more than a mile away. It was unconscionable. But it was followed soon enough by the discovery of the Quiet People, and of course Peter gifting him another apprentice through sheer accident – he had wondered if he might end up with a WPC, hadn’t he? So now he had Lesley May to teach as well. Or he’d _had_ her to teach, for a time, and then she’d walked away.  
  
In all of that, there was scarcely time to hang around pointlessly desiring his own apprentice. He noticed Peter’s good looks, of course, in the way he’d notice anyone’s. There was something more there than the virtues of youth and symmetry, the way he lit up when he talked about architecture or one of his experiments, that glorious smile. Or the habit he had of wandering around the Folly in bare feet, even if he otherwise dressed, on weekends and in the evenings. And Thomas worried about him, of course, especially after Lesley’s betrayal. Peter cared for her, though Thomas wasn’t quite sure in what fashion, or if Peter knew himself. If, very occasionally, he looked at Peter and saw a handsome young man, the kind Thomas would have wanted to go to bed with, when he’d been young himself – well, that was his business. The moment always passed, a strange sort of visual illusion that vanished when you tilted your head the other way, and left Peter, his apprentice, perhaps his friend, insomuch as that was possible. He would admit, if asked, to feeling affection for Peter, but that was all it was; a familial, protective sort of emotion. He had so few people to care for, so few who really knew him, and they were so much in each other’s pockets. He could hardly help caring.

*

But there were the odd moments – strangely enough, never at the really frantic times, when Peter did something simultaneously rash and decided and Thomas thought his heart might stop. Like running into a tower block that was about to explode, in pursuit of a fully-trained practitioner.

It was in the still quiet times, when neither of them could sleep, or at breakfast on a Sunday morning, or when one of Peter’s experiments worked and Peter laughed aloud and punched the air – that Thomas couldn’t lie to himself. It wasn’t paternal or comradely, what he felt, wasn’t _appropriate_ , not _philos_ or _storge_ but _eros_. He wanted Peter, and of course it couldn’t happen, but nothing he’d wanted that way had ever been possible, not the way he’d wanted it. So his heart wasn’t very good at accepting defeat; this was the way things always were, and he wanted, regardless.

Peter helped, in a totally unconscious way, by merely being himself; young, terribly young, and impetuous in his own love affairs, all of which involved pretty women. Thomas had hoped it would work with Beverley Brook – she cared about him, she’d gone right to Herefordshire when Thomas had said Peter needed help, had saved him from the fae Queen – but it hadn’t, in the end. Just one of those things. Peter had been quieter, after, but not heartbroken.

Which both gave Thomas heart, because Peter had had enough heartbreak for one lifetime, in these last few years, and made him wish desperately that Peter would just find some nice girl and marry her and _stop_. Stop being here, living in Thomas’s house and eating at Thomas’s table – their table – and sitting beside him on the sofa and being the thing Thomas wanted and couldn’t ever have, not that way. It wasn’t Peter’s fault, it wasn’t something Peter _should_ ever be aware of, God knew, but Thomas sometimes felt, entirely irrationally, like he did it on purpose. Like when he looked at Thomas with open appreciation, when Thomas wore a particular suit; he knew it was aesthetic, that Peter knew the value of dressing well, but there were several he’d stopped wearing altogether, to avoid the way Peter looked at him in them. Or on lazy summer mornings when Peter showed up to breakfast in a t-shirt at least a size too small for him and what he called trackpants, which looked like they were going to fall off his hips, comfortable enough in the Folly to treat it like his home. Thomas found that somewhat endearing and accidentally arousing and mostly alarming. It was bad enough to be hamstrung like this, by the mores of his youth, but to fixate on his own apprentice like that – it just wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all.

He still didn’t know whether Peter had guessed his predilections, after that first assumption in Covent Garden – though that had been dismissed with his warrant card, he was fairly sure. He knew some of the pre-war mob Peter had spoken with – Oswald, a few others – would have told him the rumours about Molly. They’d been unexpectedly convenient when they’d first circulated, if a laughably simplistic view of things; but Peter had never looked at him, or Molly, as if he’d thought they were true. That would have been too easy.

Peter had pushed, gently, once or twice, after that conversation about his friends’ wedding, with a pointed reference or two. Thomas wasn’t sure whether he was trying to figure out Thomas’s own preferences – they said _identity_ , now, didn’t they, but that wasn’t how Thomas would ever think of it – or whether he thought Thomas held some genuine and deep-seated prejudice. He would be quite comfortable never talking about the first, and as for the second, he’d tried to never be a hypocrite. If other people, children of this modern world, felt safe and happy being known – Thomas was pleased for them. God knew his life might have been different, if he’d grown up in that sort of world. Better, probably. Certainly less lonely.

But he hadn’t, and the rules you learned in childhood were the hardest to break, even if he’d known where to start. Which certainly couldn’t be with Peter. And even had it been reciprocal, even had Peter not been his subordinate, he couldn’t quash the feeling that it wouldn’t be – that if he really cared about Peter, loved him, he would do better by him than _that_ sort of desire. So he relied on his old routines of suppression; not so hard, after all this time, and perhaps it granted him a little more focus, after all, a little more skill. Not such a terrible trade.

 If nothing else - perhaps familiarity would wear away at this odd wanting. Surely, eventually, it would.

*

By the time Peter was done with his apprenticeship – a feat of survival on both their parts, Thomas rather thought – Thomas had gotten used to it. Peter was his subordinate, if not his apprentice any longer, but also his friend and his comrade-in-arms, and he was always going to want him that way, at least a little, and there was no need to dwell on it. The stupid thing was that by now he lived in an age where, if he’d wanted, if he’d had the time or the ability to meet people he wasn’t interviewing or arresting or working with, if he’d been able to overcome the voice that told him it wasn’t right, wasn’t a longing that should be indulged, wasn’t _normal_ for him to want – he’d have been able to meet someone, and court them, and be with them. And no-one would blink an eyelash, not even Peter, most likely.

As it was, the main problem with his unfortunate…fixation, he decided to call it, the main problem with it was that it occasionally led him to read things into interactions with Peter that weren’t really there – that _couldn’t_ really be there. It had always been surprisingly easy, with Peter, surprisingly comfortable, despite all their differences. After nearly a decade of working together, living in the same house, it didn’t really mean much that Peter would sometimes touch him, now. It was all perfectly appropriate – a gentle tap on the elbow to get Thomas’s attention, a clap on the shoulder once or twice, not scrupling to sprawl next to him on the sofa in the coach house. Nothing Thomas had the slightest qualm about reciprocating, nothing he didn’t reciprocate without much thought, even with the constant urging of his instincts to be certain that it couldn’t be misinterpreted as – anything it wasn’t. And another set of instincts _wanting_ to misinterpret, almost every time.

Or that once when Thomas had fallen asleep in the library, rather embarrassingly, face-down on a pile of books – it had been a _very_ trying week, and Peter’s Greek just hadn’t been up to the task for the references needed, or at least it had been more efficient for him to try the mundane library. Thomas hadn’t been _asleep_ so much as gently dozing, and he’d dimly heard Peter entering – he’d known it was Peter because Molly’s footsteps wouldn’t have been audible. Then there’d been a hand on his shoulder, presumably Peter meaning to shake him awake. But it had lingered instead, and Thomas had meant to stir, but he thought he’d just wait for Peter to say something – anything – and he didn’t, and he didn’t, and Thomas had wondered what he was thinking. Peter had given Thomas’s shoulder a gentle shake, finally, and before Thomas had had time to think he’d reached up and grasped Peter’s hand, lifted it away, and let it go before – before he could hold it too long, before it could mean anything else.

He had felt its phantom weight for the rest of the night, prickling onto his skin.

“Sorry, I thought you were asleep,” Peter had said, dropping into the next chair, sounding oddly breathless. “Do we need to start again in the morning?”

“No, just – resting my eyes,” Thomas had told him, trying to look at Peter’s face, not his hands, and barely succeeding. “Any luck on your end?”

And they’d gotten back to work without further - incident.

They’d been talking about taking on a new apprentice, or apprentices; Peter was adamant they needed more manpower, and that now he was trained, it made sense to expand the Folly. It did make sense. Besides, it would be good to have other people around the place. It was _necessary_ , Thomas was coming to conclude. Otherwise he was going to slip up, one day, do something that he might regret, or worse, bring Peter to do something he might regret, or – regrets seemed inevitable, either way. Peter had also recently been promoted to Detective Sergeant, which had necessitated a celebration, of course, with the colleagues in the Met he worked with the most closely – people like Sahra Guleed and Miriam Stephanopoulos, or Jaget Kumar with the BTP, a few others. As Peter’s supervisor Thomas was obliged to attend, so he made small talk with some of the other more senior officers and restricted himself to a single drink, and felt he did an excellent job of paying Peter precisely as much attention as he deserved, at his own celebration, and no more than he should.

He left at a reasonable hour, after assuring himself that Peter would be able to get back to the Folly, and was taken aback to hear the rear door open and see Peter walk into the atrium not fifteen minutes after he’d arrived himself. Thomas had been heading up to his bed, after saying hello to Molly; he hadn’t expected to see Peter until the next morning.

“Done in already?” he asked. He hadn’t seen how much Peter had had to drink, but thought it was more than one, possibly more than several.

Peter shrugged. “Yeah. Staying up all night isn’t as fun as it used to be. And it’s a work night for most of us, anyway.” He walked over to where Thomas was standing at the foot of the stairs; his coat was still on.

“Congratulations again, Sergeant Grant,” said Thomas, who’d said it once already, but felt it bore repeating. It wasn’t about the promotion within the Met so much as Peter’s attainment of his staff, which he knew Peter knew. That they’d come at around the same time had been coincidence.

“For all the good it’s going to do me,” Peter said, with a wry smile. “Until we get some PCs in for me to have at.”

“Abigail’s probationary period is almost up,” Thomas reminded him.

“Hah. Yeah, and you thought I was bad.”

The smile they exchanged took any sting out of those words. Peter had been a good student, all things considered, all the constraints they’d both worked under. But perhaps he knew that, too.

“I’m for bed, then,” Thomas said, when Peter didn’t say anything else. It wasn’t a bad silence, just a very particular one; the look in Peter’s eyes was fond, although maybe that was the alcohol, and he couldn’t stand right now, suddenly, to have Peter express any sort of affection, any at all.

“Hold on a second,” Peter said, and reached out and laid a hand on Thomas’s arm.

Thomas meant to pull away, but he couldn’t for the life of him.

“Let’s just - pretend I drank more than I did,” said Peter, hurriedly, meeting his gaze with disturbing directness, and before Thomas could wonder what was going on he was being kissed. By Peter. In the atrium of the Folly. Of all the places.  

Thomas put out a hand, blindly, meaning to – he wasn’t sure what – but his fingers somehow tangled themselves in Peter’s coat, and it did no good; he wasn’t even sure he was still awake, that he hadn’t gone up the stairs to his bed and fallen asleep, that he hadn’t imagined Peter coming home.

But he’d had those dreams and they didn’t go like this. They were smoother-edged, simpler. He never felt the chill of the night air in the fabric of Peter’s coat, or Peter’s five o’clock shadow against his own, and Peter’s lips were never chapped, nor Peter himself quite so bold and hesitant at once.

When it was done he opened his eyes, but he couldn’t quite step away. Not yet; just give it a second, a moment.

“I’m for bed, too,” Peter said, and his voice was deeper than usual, a low buzz in Thomas’s ears. “If you want.”

“But you don’t,” Thomas said, and that wasn’t what he’d meant to say at all – he’d meant to say, but we can’t. Because they couldn’t, of course. And perhaps Peter was drunker than he thought himself, after all, and what sort of person would that make Thomas, if he said yes?

“I do, actually,” Peter said; Thomas was still so close to him that he could feel his smile, more than see it. “I mean – not usually – that’s fair. But I want to, with – with you.”

“I can’t do that to you,” Thomas managed, and that was closer; he meant that; Peter was one of the things he’d made right, a good thing he’d done, and he deserved better than this.   

“Wait, what?” Peter said, drawing back, and there was confusion on his face. “Okay, I was ready for ‘this is totally inappropriate’, or ‘not on the first date’, or ‘go to bed, Peter, you’re drunk’ – which I’m not, so we’re clear – but…that doesn’t sound like any of those.”

“The first is true enough,” Thomas told him. “And you can’t blame me for suspecting the last.”

“And I wasn’t asking you to do anything _to_ me,” Peter continued, more quietly. “I was asking if - if you wanted to do something _with_ me.”

This was where Thomas should say no – meant to say it – but he couldn’t form the word. Or the other. Or do anything at all.

He realised, abruptly, that he was still holding Peter by his coat, keeping him from moving any further away. He let go.

Peter smiled crookedly, and looked down. “So – let’s pretend I _was_ drunker than I should’ve been, shall we? And maybe I can look you in the eye, in the morning.”

He took a step back, and another, and then turned to go up the stairs. Thomas watched him go, and sat down on the first step, as if the cool marble might cool his blood, listening to Peter making his way slowly upstairs.

The footsteps stopped on the first landing for a good minute, before they continued. Thomas breathed, and didn’t look around.

The thing was – Thomas _knew_ Peter, knew Peter had made his offer in all sincerity; knew what he’d want; not some quick and furtive thing, but something real, something that wouldn’t vanish in the morning, no matter where it went after that. There wasn’t any shame in Peter, not in this. And Thomas didn’t know if he had anything else to offer. He never had before.

He’d never really had the chance, before.

He got up, and walked up the stairs. And kept walking. It was the perfect focus that came before a fight, when you cleared your mind, thought of the _formae_ but didn’t shape them. It carried him up the next flight of steps, and the next, all the way to Peter’s room.

There was a full fifteen seconds between when he knocked on Peter’s door and when Peter opened it. Thomas counted them in heartbeats.

Peter had removed his coat, but was still fully dressed. That was the first thing Thomas noticed. The second was the look on his face. It was half-wary and half-hopeful; Thomas hated that he’d made him wary and hated even more that it was the same hope he was feeling himself.

Peter opened his mouth, and Thomas reached out, through the invisible barrier of the doorway, let his fingertips graze Peter’s cheek, his thumb come to rest on Peter’s lips. Peter didn’t say anything, just turned his head into Thomas’s hand, kissed his palm. Thomas felt it shiver down his spine and let himself be drawn inside the room by it, let himself – this once – be brave.

He knew very well they should talk about this, but it was the _last_ thing he wanted to do. His bravery didn’t go quite that far. So instead he put his other hand on Peter’s waist and kissed him, the way he’d wanted to since – he couldn’t remember when. Peter was smiling into it, and he walked them back a step or two to push Thomas up against the door. It clicked shut with a peculiar finality. Thomas was aware – he was aware of _everything_ Peter was doing right now, but this particularly – that Peter was keeping back a little, as if he didn’t want Thomas to feel trapped, hands only lightly on Thomas’s shoulders. Thomas was rather more worried about his own good sense getting the better of him – or Peter’s of him – so he used the hand on Peter’s waist and one leg to pull Peter a little closer, until they were pressed full-length against each other, and that, that was better. He could feel every inch of Peter’s body, warm even through all the layers of clothing, and that was a problem they were going to have to solve _very_ soon, all those layers in the way. He dipped his fingers under the collar of Peter’s shirt, at the back of his neck, just a gentle brush against the smooth skin there, and was rewarded with Peter shivering and making a noise suspiciously like a whimper into their kiss.

Peter returned the favour by sliding his hands under Thomas’s jacket and attempting to push it off altogether; achieving this necessitated Thomas letting go of him, so he reeled him back in as soon as the jacket was gone. He could feel Peter hardening against his hip, and it was so good already, just like this, that staying as close to Peter as possible seemed much more important than removing more of their clothing. Peter’s own jacket was just going to have to wait a minute.

It took some indeterminate length of time to work down to their shirts; Thomas’s vest turned out to have entirely too many buttons and Peter, who was so good at being distracted, was even better at being distract _ing_ , it appeared, when he put his mind into it, and also his hands and his mouth. And Thomas wasn’t any less guilty, breaking off to run a hand down Peter’s back, kiss the curve of his neck, the brown shell of his ear. By the time Thomas actually managed to get a hand on Peter’s bare skin, by the simple expedient of untucking Peter’s shirt, he felt it like a shock.

“Inverse correlation,” Peter muttered against his mouth, getting to work on Thomas’s shirt buttons. Thomas’s tie had gone by the wayside somewhere and he couldn’t have cared less where.

It was the first thing Peter had said since he’d opened his door.

“What?” Thomas managed.

“Between,” Peter said, and broke away to kiss Thomas’s neck again, “how sexy you look in this damn suit and how long it takes to get it off you.” He worked his way back to Thomas’s mouth, having dealt with the last button. “And _now_ we’re getting somewhere.”

It was so perfectly _Peter_ that Thomas couldn’t help a breath of a laugh, even as he worked on Peter’s shirt buttons in turn; he’d gotten distracted half way through by the way Peter had hissed when he’d traced his thumb over Peter’s nipple, and had to do it a few more times, just for reference. “That’s not really why I wear them.”

“No, but do feel free to continue on my account,” Peter said, wearing a pleased grin as he helped Thomas pull his shirt off. Thomas was trying to remember why he was supposed to _not_ want this, and couldn’t come up with a single solitary reason that had any importance next to having put that look on Peter’s face.

If they were doing this, though, Thomas was minded to do it properly, so he put his hands on Peter’s hips and nudged him towards the bed. They almost made it over there still standing until Thomas, attention on anything other than where he was putting his feet, stumbled against Peter’s chair and tipped them both onto the bed. They ended up on their sides, facing each other, legs tangled.

“Oh, hello,” Peter said, sounding delighted.

“Hello, again,” said Thomas, and smiled – he couldn’t help it. The hazy mist of arousal was as disinhibiting as alcohol. He wanted to put his hands all over Peter and not stop for anything, and he was, and he _could_.

They could.

Afterwards, in the warm post-coital lassitude Thomas had never gotten to enjoy very long, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He knew Peter could see the tension creeping back in, but it was too much, right now, to look right at him. The whole thing was too much – he wanted to leave and he didn’t want to be anywhere else and this was why he hadn’t – it _wasn’t_ fair, on Peter. All of this.

But this wasn’t something he could take upon himself; he wasn’t that arrogant, and Peter had said it himself, earlier, _I was asking you to do something_ with _me._ And he was still coming down from it, hyper-sensitive to Peter just a few inches away, to the stray brush of their legs and the sound of Peter’s slowing breathing. If he couldn’t explain himself _now_ -

So he pillowed his chin on his folded arms and addressed the headboard. “I’m not very good at this.”

He didn’t need to see Peter’s smile. “I think I beg to differ.”

“Thank you, but I meant – at feeling like this is something I’m allowed to do.” He got up his courage and looked over; and it was just Peter, after all, still smiling faintly. Nothing to fear there.

“We’re not talking about the work thing, are we.” Peter frowned, a little. “I thought that might be what you – but you don’t, you’re not…you’ve never had a problem with anyone else who’s, you know, not straight. And you wanted this.”

“I want this,” Thomas managed to say, just in case it wasn’t obvious, with them both lying here naked and satiated and, he hoped, rather happy about it. “I have wanted this. But apart from – as you put it, the work thing – I just wasn’t brought up to think this was…something I was allowed to have. Or want. Or do. Or be _happy_ doing.”

“You were happy, tonight.” Peter traced a finger along Thomas’s lower lip. “I think I saw you smile as much as I normally see you smile in a week. I liked that.”

“I liked it too,” Thomas told him, kissing the fingertip he’d been presented with. “And that’s why I’m telling you. So you don’t think it’s about you, or this, or not wanting – or anything of that nature. It’s just…some of the things you learn, when you’re young, they don’t go away. Even when you’d like them to.”

Peter snorted. “Well, you don’t need to tell me _that_.”

Thomas thought about the way Peter had looked, during, pleased and aroused and curious and yet a little apprehensive, a little defiant. Of what, Thomas hadn’t been sure. Maybe Thomas wasn’t the only one with one of those quiet voices, telling him what he should and shouldn’t be doing.

“But it’s not, it’s not…” Thomas tried to find the right words. “A _lack_ of wanting, if you will.”

“Can’t say I’m sorry to hear that,” Peter admitted. “And – also in the spirit of experimenting – I’d like to offer a solution.”

“Oh?” said Thomas, who had a fair idea what it was going to be.

“We do this repeatedly until you stop worrying about whether you’re supposed to be enjoying yourself or not,” Peter said promptly, quite as Thomas had expected, and with only a hint of tentativeness.

“Well, that sounds like a plan,” Thomas told him, and a little tension he hadn’t recognised until now bled out of Peter, too.

Thomas had still meant to get up, at some point, pick up his scattered clothing and find his own bed, and hope he didn’t run into Molly on the way; that _would_ be awkward. But it was comfortable, and when they’d both cooled down it seemed only natural to crawl under the blankets, just for a minute longer, and another, and another. Before Thomas knew it he was waking up in Peter’s bed as the morning light crept under the curtains, both of them naked as the day they were born. And for a moment – maybe longer – he froze; wondered what he was doing, after all, what he’d let himself do, what the consequences were going to be; whether Peter was going to wake and look at him with regret, or just a cheerful distance that might be worse.

Thomas contemplated stealing away before Peter woke up, just so he wouldn’t have to find out. But he wanted to lie here a minute more, watch Peter’s sleeping face, winter-sallow but still dark against the starched white cotton of the pillowcase, tight curls starting to blossom as he got closer to his spring haircut. Thomas wanted to run his fingers through them, trace the bridge of Peter’s nose, the line of his jaw, learn his dear face by feel.  And then Peter’s eyes cracked open. He took in Thomas, still there, still close – the bed wasn’t big enough for either of them to get very far away from the other – and he smiled like the sun coming up.

“You’re still here,” Peter said.

“Yes,” said Thomas, and reached out to touch Peter’s face, just as he had the night before. It was going to get easier with practice. He could already tell. “Yes, I am.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [stranger than you could imagine by Sixthlight [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7949128) by [Rhea314 (Rhea)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhea/pseuds/Rhea314)




End file.
